Parents Fighting School Leadership When Both Should Be On Children`s Side

COMMENTARY

May 17, 1993|By CLARENCE PAGE, Tribune Media Services

John Jenkins didn`t plan to be a revolutionary. It just worked out that way.

The 43-year-old resident of a poor black neighborhood on Chicago`s West Side is part of a lawsuit filed by 70 parents and a conservative Washington legal foundation to force Illinois and California to do what their legislatures, like those in most other states, have refused to do: provide parents with vouchers they can redeem at the public or private school of their choice.

Stranger things have happened. Courts already have ruled that the state may be required to pay for disabled students to be educated in a private school if their assigned public school has inadequate facilities. So it is not entirely unreasonable to demand the same option when assigned schools fail to provide quality education for the abled.

The Illinois constitution says flatly, ``The state shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services.``

In too many urban school systems, that simply isn`t happening. Less than a third of Chicago`s public high schools have a graduation rate above 50 percent, and many graduates can barely read their own diplomas.

Jenkins, a professional filmmaker, discovered why firsthand when, after a run of bad economic fortune, he had to move his wife and three children out of their apartment in Chicago`s plush North Side ``Gold Coast`` neighborhood to a low-rent flat near a high-crime public housing project on the city`s West Side.

``From the Gold Coast to the Soul Coast,`` Jenkins jokes about the move, but there was nothing funny about the impact her new school had on his 7-year- old daughter, Noreen.

``She told me about the toy guns the kids would be showing off in the playground and how some of them were selling candy for 25 cents,`` Jenkins recalled. ``I later found out those guns were real guns and the candy was really tablets of LSD! And we`re talking about grade-school kids!``

It got worse. She began making up excuses to avoid going to school. She lost sleep and had nightmares.

Finally, Jenkins says, his voice choking with emotion, after an arson fire at the school one Christmas Eve night, his daughter pleaded not to be sent back to the school again. ``Daddy, I don`t want to be burnt up,`` she said.

Desperate, John Jenkins and his wife, Michelle, lied about their address to re-enroll their daughter in Ogden School, the plush little public school they left behind. The ride required two trains and a bus each way, but it was worth it. Noreen, now 11, joined the computer club, the chorus and other enriching activities that students at her old school could only dream about.

Her younger brother, John Jr., now 8, joined her when he became old enough and he, too, flourished. But when school officials uncovered the Jenkinses` phony address a couple of years ago, it was time for a showdown. Jenkins threatened to chain himself to Ogden`s front door unless his daughter was allowed to stay. Ogden`s principal relented and pulled strings all the way up to Superintendent Ted Kimbrough`s office to make it happen, Jenkins says.

But the Jenkinses want more. There are private schools near their neighborhood whose academic performance is just good as Ogden`s, but the Jenkinses can`t afford to pay the tuition for John, Noreen and their other girl, Meagan, now 5. So, with the help of the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based libertarian lawyers group co-founded by Clint Bollick, a former Reagan Justice Department scholar, they became would-be revolutionaries. They filed their novel lawsuit on behalf of 70 low-income parents and children.

Judge Aaron Jaffe, of Cook County Circuit Court, dealt them a setback in March when he dismissed the suit. The Institute is appealing it to the Illinois Supreme Court. Jenkins is resolutely optimistic. He thinks they`re going to win.

I don`t. I have no reason to believe the state or federal Supreme Court will be enthusiastic about turning school funding in Illinois and the nation on its head in what would be a landmark decision.

In fact, I find it rather ironic that some of the same conservative voices who rail against judicial activism overruling legislative processes in causes they don`t like, like the right to choose an abortion, are hoping and praying judicial activism will overrule legislatures on behalf of a cause that, in this instance, they like.

Perhaps they should wait. State legislatures and voters fed up with stagnating public school systems are slowly coming around in many states.

Wisconsin, with Bollick`s help, has a popular pilot voucher program in Milwaukee. Other places, like Minnesota and two New York City districts, are experimenting with open enrollment that provides parental choice, reduces bureaucracy and encourages competition between public schools, a form of choice favored by President Clinton, teachers unions and what appears to be a growing number of liberals.

Beneath the voucher debate lies a more fundamental problem: bloated school systems whose bureaucracies suck up half the dollars before they reach the classroom and fail to respond to the people they are supposed to serve.

Instead, parents like John Jenkins find themselves fighting a grass-roots rebellion against leaders who should be on their side.

``Most parents in my neighborhood can`t afford to send their kids to private schools,`` said Jenkins. ``These kids are like the kids in Bosnia, suffering from shell shock, and their leadership has sold them out.``

Indeed, they have. I don`t want to give up on the public schools. But sometimes the public schools seem to have given up on those who need them most.